Update time.
Since my last post I've been busy. I accepted a whole bunch of Corals to "baby-sit" because her tank crashed. Some beautiful stuff in there, Ricordia's, Acan's, frogspawn and hammer as well as some montiporas. Everything I like is leaning up against the rockwork in case it "decides" to frag itself!!! It was all in fairly rough shape when I got it, but is coming along nicely.
I got a nice birdsnest and monti cap from Fishytime and they're both doing really well. I'll try and get some livestock pic's up tommorow.
On Sunday, ran down to Golds and bought a nice little target mandarin. She's quite pleased in the new diggs and very sociable. My wifes already in love with her! I also grabbed a zeovit starter package.
After doing a bunch of fence sitting and reading about the zeovit system I decided to give it a 6 month trial. My reasoning is that it isn't a whole lot more expensive then running rowaphos and swapping it out every month. In fact it may be a little bit cheaper and it provides some extra benefits that I like. I'm really hoping it helps my zoanthids. For some reason the things will not thrive in my tank. I've got Monti's and 2 birdsnest that are growing like crazy, my lps' have great colour and look happy, but softies and zoanthids do not thrive in my tank. I'm not sure what the problem is, but zoanthids in particular just seem to barely stay alive sometimes.
My mental blocks that have kept me away from it up until now... I was afraid of the time commitment and the cost. Now that I've rationalized the cost all I had to get over was the time commitment, and really it only takes seconds out of my day.
Because I didn't buy a proper zeovit reactor I just put the zeolith rocks in a filter bag in my sump. I don't think this was really doing anything but I wanted them in there even for just a minor effect. So they went in Sunday night, as well I started the full dosing regime that evening. I'm just going with the basic 4 ingredients (zeoliths, zeobac, zeostart and zeofood7). Since then I've noticed my water is clearer, the skimmer is pulling more stuff and the sand-bed looks SLIGHTLY cleaner. I'm getting some nice colour from the one birdsnest frag that I wasn't getting before. The only negative I can see so far is that the LPS are a little "pouty" at night. During the day they're loving life and look great though so I'm not really concerned... probably just an adjustment phase.
Not wanting to spend the hundreds of dollars they seem to want for a "professionally made" zeovit reactor, I decided to make my own for as cheap as possible (just to spite the manufacturers) Quite often, inspiration for DIY aquarium projects comes from my wifes kitchen (much to her dismay) and this time was no exception. After poking around a bit, I found what I needed in the Kitchen section of Canadian Tire. For the reactor body, I found a 1.9 litre juice mixing jug. Cost... $8.65, throw in some plumbing bits and I'm probably up to $18 or $19... not too shabby!
Here are some pics of the construction....
Here's the jug, I drilled a hole in the bottom and just siliconed a barbed fitting in there. The eggcrate you see in there is to support the tray holding the rock.
Here's the "Juice Mixing lid and attachment" All I did was glue some plastic mesh to it. I found out that I did have to pull it apart and re-enforce the handle/rod where it joins with the mesh.
Cut off the bottom of the jug handle and it clips right to the baffles. In this shot I've got the rocks in and carbon is sitting in a bag on top.
I'm running about 60-65gph (240 litres per hour) through the reactor, I'll increase that gradually up to ~100gph over the next month. Overall, I'm already not quite happy with this reactor but for ~$20 how can a guy go wrong. My biggest beef is I'm thinking I should've gone with a little bigger container. If the zeovit works out and I decide to stay with it I'll build something really fancy.
Keep an eye out for livestock pictures coming up!